Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost
November 12, 2006
Sermon by Pastor John Marboe
The
Holy Gospel according to St. Mark.
(Mark 12:38-44)
As Jesus taught, he
said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be
greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the
synagogues and places of honor at banquets!
They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long
prayers. They will receive the greater
condemnation.”
He sat down opposite the
treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper
coins, which are worth a penny. Then he
called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has
put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their
abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she
had to live on.”
The
Gospel of the Lord.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, from our
Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.
Well, what a sweet story, this story of the widow—the
widow’s mite as many of us learned it
in Sunday school—a model of giving; a sweet story. She gave more than all the rich people
combined. But, like so many of
the things that Jesus said and did, the more one actually thinks about what’s
going on here the more troubling it becomes.
Who is this widow?
What is she doing, putting in the last little bit of money that she has
into the temple treasury? Who is
she? What’s her story? How did she become so destitute? Has she been a widow a long time? Did her husband die young? Or is she newly widowed? We only know that she has lost her partner.
And where are her children? According to the law, they should be caring
for her. Or does she have children? Perhaps she was unable to have children, for
some reason. Or perhaps her children are
still very little.
And what about her extended family, her in-laws, her
husband’s family, or her own siblings, where are they? Perhaps they are poor, too. Or perhaps the reality is a bit more ugly.
In the Pioneer Press this morning, I was
caught by a headline: “Iraqi widows often shunned and pitied.” And I thought it might give us a little bit
of an insight into how widows are treated in more traditional cultures.
There’s a story in there about a woman named Wafa
Abd, a young woman seven-months pregnant, who was recently made a widow when
her husband, anxiously trying to get home to his pregnant wife, was shot as he
tried to cross a military-cordoned line.
Let me read a bit from this article.
Widows are among the most vulnerable members of Iraqi
society. Pitied and shunned, they get
only a small stipend from the government – as little as $25 a month. No one knows how many widows there are in
There was little sympathy at home, Abd says. Although pregnant, she was beaten by her
father-in-law, who also sold her gold jewelry.
Her daughter, Zahra, was born two months later. When Abd’s mother gave her some money to
support Zahra, her brother beat her and ransacked her room, demanding the
money, Abd says.
“I can’t hear with one ear now,” she said. “Brothers have no mercy.” Abd moved out of her in-laws’ house and now
rents a mud hut for $500 a month, her dignity obliterated.
Shadha Naji, head of Women for Peace, a
nongovernmental group, says activists have tried to establish better benefits
for widows.
According to religious and civil law, a widow is
supposed to inherit a share of her dead husband’s wealth and his house – the
structure but not necessarily the land.
But Naji says it is too easy for male relatives to
disregard the law.
Jesus observes a poor widow in the ancient
world. The scene occurs in our Gospel
just as Jesus has been having a running argument with the scribes. In the first lines of the Gospel text, Jesus
tells the people, “Beware of the scribes.”
Well, who are the scribes? In Jesus’ day, scribes are very powerful
people. They are the stewards of
First of all, the scribes taught that if a young man
became a disciple of a scribe, the obligation that young man had toward the
scribe was greater even than the obligation he had toward his own parents, such
that if the scribe was growing old and the parents were growing old, the first
duty of the disciple was to care for the scribe.
The second thing that the scribes taught was that it was actually holier to take one’s money and put it into the temple treasury than to use it in the care of one’s aging parents. It was higher and holier in the eyes of God to take one’s money and put it into the temple treasury than it was to take care of one’s aging parents. This, also, the scribes taught. This law was called “korban,” and Jesus railed against the scribes for teaching that as law.
Could it be that this poor widow is destitute
because, although she has sons, they are either devoted to a scribe or because
they have been taught that the temple treasury is more important than her
welfare? We don’t know. Or could it just be that nobody cares about
her?
What we do know is that this impoverished widow is
quietly putting her last two coins, all she has to live on, into the temple
treasury. And we know that Jesus notices
and tells his disciples she’s given more than all the rich people combined.
This is
a story about stewardship, but not in the sense that we are used to
understanding it. The widow is not a
model of Christian giving. She is not a model for us! She is a victim of a
travesty of justice. She is a victim of
a lack of stewardship on the part of
those who have means and power.
Listen
again to the Psalm and what God cares about.
God says:
I am the one who gives justice to those who are oppressed and food to those who hunger.
The Lord sets prisoners free.
The Lord opens the eyes of
the blind;
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
The Lord cares for the stranger.
God sustains the orphan
and the widow.
This widow is not a model of giving. Nobody should give their last means of
sustenance to a religious institution, no matter how good it is. We don’t know what happens to that
widow. We’re not told. Maybe she survives, but maybe she dies.
Stewardship, in Jesus’ mind, is a sacred trust from
God. Stewardship is incumbent especially
upon those who have means and power, which means pretty much all of us, at
least in some measure, at least together. Stewardship does not mean giving our
last penny. Stewardship, rather, means having a heart, having a heart,
for those who have the least means and power.
Stewardship is to give of ourselves, freely and generously—not because
we have to, but because we want to—for the sake of the widow, for those without
means. In our context, that may be the
widow, or the immigrant, or the homeless person, or the mentally ill person, or
the victim of abuse, or someone in jail, or the elderly person, or the
uncared-for child.
Stewardship is together caring about what God
cares about: justice for the oppressed;
food for the hungry; the prisoner; the sick; those who are bowed down; the
widow and the orphan.
May our ministry together have this character and
this edge to it, so that Christ might one day say, “You have been good
stewards.”
Amen.